Simone Assemani "epigrafista": una lettera a Giacomo Nani su un'iscrizione greca dedicata ad Iside

This essay deals with a letter from Simone Assemani to Giacomo Nani concerning a Greek inscription dedicated to Isis (CIG 4969b). This epigraph was realized on an Egyptian offering table, which at that time was owned by the Venetian patrician Angelo Querini and was kept in the garden of his villa in Padua; today, the table is part of the collection of the Egyptian Museum of Berlin (Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum, inv. 2305). Assemani’s letter is preserved in the so-called Epistolario Moschini and is the earliest known document regarding the epigraph. In the contribution, the author first describes the artifact and reconstructs its history: the inscription was published, among others, by Niels Iversen Schow, Ulrich Friedrich Kopp, and Johannes Franz, and its interpretation is still discussed today. Then, he publishes Assemani’s letter, and comments it. In particular, this letter demonstrates that at the end of the 18th century there was a huge debate about this epigraph: Assemani got involved in it and gave to his patron Nani his personal reading of the Greek text.